Zoltán Székely ( Hungarian: Székely Zoltán; 8 December 1903 in

Kocs Kocs () is a village in Komárom-Esztergom county, Hungary. It lies west of Tata and north-west of Budapest. A site of horse-drawn vehicle manufacture from the 1400s, the name is the source of the word ''coach'' and its equivalent in other lang ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

– 5 October 2001 in Banff,

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

) was a

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

ist and composer.

Biography

Székely studied violin with

Jenő Hubay Jenő Hubay, Jenő Hubay von Szalatna, hu, szalatnai Hubay Jenő (; 15 September 185812 March 1937), also known by his German name Eugen Huber (), was a Hungarian violinist, composer and music teacher. Early life Hubay was born into a Ger ...

and composition with

Zoltán Kodály Zoltán Kodály (; hu, Kodály Zoltán, ; 16 December 1882 – 6 March 1967) was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is well known internationally as the creator of the Kodály method of music edu ...

at the

Franz Liszt Academy The Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music ( hu, Liszt Ferenc Zeneművészeti Egyetem, often abbreviated as ''Zeneakadémia'', "Liszt Academy") is a music university and a concert hall in Budapest, Hungary, founded on November 14, 1875. It is home to the ...

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

. He composed mainly chamber music. Székely toured Europe with the virtuoso young cellist Paul Hermann. Székely was a friend of Béla Bartók and was the one to request the composition of Bartók's Second Violin Concerto and its dedicatee as well as performer at its premiere in March, 1939, Mengelberg conducting. The performance was a live broadcast and was recorded by Radio Hilversum on 78 RPM acetates, the most used recording medium at the time. For several years he lived in the Netherlands and from 1940–1941 he was leader/concertmaster of the

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra ( nl, Koninklĳk Concertgebouworkest, ) is a Dutch symphony orchestra, based at the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw (concert hall). Considered one of the world's leading orchestras, Queen Beatrix conferred the " ...

under

Willem Mengelberg Joseph Wilhelm Mengelberg (28 March 1871 – 21 March 1951) was a Dutch conductor, famous for his performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler and Strauss with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest s ...

. He later went to live in the USA and Canada. Zoltan Szekely joined the Hungarian String Quartet in its second year, and played the first violin from 1937 until the quartet disbanded in 1972. He was named Honorary Professor by the Franz Liszt Academy in 1981, which marked Bartók's centenary. Székely transcribed Bartók's ''

Romanian Folk Dances ''Romanian Folk Dances'' ( ro, Dansuri populare românești, ), ( hu, Román népi táncok, ), Sz. 56, BB 68 is a suite of six short piano pieces composed by Béla Bartók in 1915. He later orchestrated it for small ensemble in 1917 as Sz. 68, BB ...

'' for violin and piano.

References

External links

* 1903 births 2001 deaths Franz Liszt Academy of Music alumni Academic staff of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music Hungarian composers Hungarian male composers Hungarian classical violinists Male classical violinists Players of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra 20th-century classical violinists 20th-century Hungarian male musicians {{violinist-stub